He scoffed. “I can’t possibly suffer more than I do now. Every moment is agony anyway. At least this way you would suffer alongside me.” He felt a kind of vicious happiness making the proposal, like he’d told a good joke at her expense.
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the floor as the damp spots there evaporated. Then she raised her head. “I agree.”
Her acceptance stunned him. He had expected her to argue and cry, not to capitulate. “Why would you?”
“I’ll do it if it’s what you want from me. If it’s the price of keeping Loïc in my life, of making amends for what I’ve done.” Her chin lifted with the same defiance he’d once found irresistible. “If those are the terms, then yes.”
“We are in agreement, then.” He had a son, and he’d soon have a mate again. A traitorous one, but the only one who deserved to be bound to his mess of a mind. What an empty triumph. The fledgling in his arms suddenly weighed the world. “Tomorrow night, you’ll accept my claim.”
She reached for Loïc, but he turned away from her. “He’ll stays with me tonight.”
“He’ll be confused if he wakes somewhere unfamiliar.”
“Then I’ll comfort him the way fathers do.” The words came out sharper than intended.
“He has school in the morning,” she protested, wringing her hands.
“You have a key. You can take him after dawn.”
He adjusted Loïc’s weight, and his son nestled deeper into sleep. “Return tomorrow night if you’re ready to pay the price. If not, send his things with a keeper.”
“I’ll come myself.”
“We’ll see.”
After she left, Brandt carried Loïc to his nest, settling them both among the furs. Tomorrow, he’d outfit Ghantal’s chamber for him, but for tonight, the boy fit perfectly in the curve of his arm, like he’d been carved to rest there.
“Papa?” Loïc mumbled, not quite waking.
“I’m here.”
“Good.” The boy pressed closer, one small hand clutching Brandt’s scarred forearm. “Stay with me.”
The simple words broke him. His son wanted him there. Wanted to be close to him.
He thought of Idabel’s tears, her desperate plea not to lose their son. Part of him—the part that wasn’t blind with rage—recognized the cruelty of threatening to take Loïc entirely. She’d raised him alone, loved him fiercely, made him into this amazing creature who spoke two languages and yearned to fly.
But the larger part, the wounded part, thenewpart, wanted her to suffer as he suffered. Wanted her to know what it felt like to have everything that mattered ripped away without warning or choice.
The bite would accomplish that. She’d feel inside his fractured mind, get lost among his walls. She’d understand what the war had done to him, what her betrayal had compounded. What these weeks of lies had cost.
Maybe then they’d be even.
Maybe then he could begin to forgive.
Or maybe forgiveness was a luxury he’d lost along with everything else, and all they’d share was a son they’d both fight to keep.
Loïc sighed in his sleep, happy and safe. Brandt pressed his face to his son’s dark hair, breathing in his scent. The tiny remnants of the parent-child bond feathered against his pulse.
Tomorrow night, he would bite Idabel again. Not with love this time, but with bitter justice. It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t kindness.
But it was all he had left to give.
Chapter 27
Idabel
She found Loïc in Brandt’s nesting chamber, still asleep in his father’s stone arms. Brandt must have held him all night. The sight of them curled up together made her chest constrict.
